fêting the forgotten; curating the uncultivated

Monthly Archives: November 2015

We’ve defined feral cars as those which are, plausibly, everyday drivers. We don’t seek them out at car shows or dealerships, whatever one might see here is captured “in the wild,” so to speak. We’ve never done a Porsche post because, face it, most of the older ones are locked in garages, in exotic car dealerships and taken out for events. We’ve been collecting Porsches in our image bank hoping we’d achieve critical mass and that day has come.

This post was prompted by the discovery of a really nice, original 912 (that’s not a typo, the body is very much like the 911 but there are two fewer cylinders in the motor) that was parked just down the street from us. While we were photographing it the owner presented himself and confirmed that it is, in fact, an everyday driver that is used for the same errands for which you might employ your Corolla, Accord or Jetta to accomplish.. OK, maybe not for Dominoes deliveries

Off to Costco!

Except this is a for real 1969 Porsche 912, the last model year for the four cylinder air-cooled motor and it’s most impressive. The owner reported the paint is not original but the car had been wearing it since he bought it several decades ago. His 912 was actually hauled out of a barn where it had been resting at the time of its purchase necessitated by the fact that his Volvo P1800 had just been demolished in a confrontation with a truck. Apart from its overall originality, we were impressed with the pop out rear windows and the toaster slot hand cranked sunroof, both items of which are very important details in the car which isn’t equipped with air conditioning, nor, for that matter much of anything that’s electronic.

How blue can you get?

We reached back eight years earlier in Porsche history for this ’61 Super 90 that was captured in Salt Lake City by Feral Cars Field Scout Bennett C. Sandick. The body colored bumpers won our heart as did the tiny two-tone taillights.

Brothers under the skin

We found a ’65 Porsche C, one of the last of the historic 356 “bathtub” cars parked next to a late ’60s Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia. Under their respective skins lurk many similarities, e.g. swing axles, air cooled rear engines, torsion bar suspension. Could this rendezvous between not-so-distant cousins have been planed or was it serendipitous?

Back in black

The black paint job gives this 356C a formal look but we’re guessing it’s hot as the blazes inside. Open the damn windows!

Roadside attraction

We are grateful to Sean Grimes for this very artful shot of his ’71 911. It really does capture the car’s stunningly fluid simplicity.

Rubber dubber

We found a ’78 911SC parked across the street. These were built when black was the new chrome. The subtle wheel flairs accommodate tires wider than the actual body and those rubber bumper attenuators and black rubber rear bumper bumpers are there to comply with new U.S. federal low speed crash standards.

Bumpin’

Feral Cars Field Scout Tim Merlis found a 911 “Whale Tail” on the streets of Montreal. These Frankensteinish cars were the fastest Porsche cars of the era (’75 – ’89) and that huge rear appurtenance served several functions: it channeled more air into the turbo charged engine, it created down force to keep the car from lifting at high speeds and it told the world the driver was probably trying to compensate for something lacking in his (never a her) personality or anatomy. From the look of that raw red rear bumper, it looks like this one is dealing with the automotive equivalent of a hemorrhoid onslaught. Ouch!

Moby Dick joke goes here

Headlight washers, a handy feature, especially in Quebec

While we’re on the subject of workaday Porsches, let’s not forget the front engine water-cooled variety. Here’s an ’84 928. It’s powered by a V8 and is fairly hefty (about 3400 pounds) and is, to our way of thinking the least “porschey” car ever build by Porsche.

You coulda had a V8

Scraping by

We found this 1988 944 Turbo the other day and were impressed with its <ahem> “patina.” These were powered by a four cylinder motor that was, essentially, half of the V8 used in the 928. This same trick was used by International Harvester for its 4 cylinder Scout. that motor was sourced from the company’s V8 of exactly twice the cubic inch displacement.

944: 924 plus 20

Porsche invented and patented the term Targa ®. It’s really a full width hatch top with a fixed rear window. The idea is it’s the best of both worlds — convertible and coupe — and that brushed chrome Targa ® band is a nice touch. This one is a 911SC that we believe is a ’77 based on the look of the bumpers but your guess is as good, if not better, than ours.

Butterscotch Targa ®

Feral Cars Field Scout Amy Treco risked life and limb to capture this ’68 911. That California black plate beginning with an “X” is the giveaway as to the model year as are the side markers on the front and rear fenders. Great to see an original car like this in actual use.

If you’ve stalked a feral car and would like to submit a photo of it for posting consideration please send it to us: info (at) feralcars (dot)com OR through our Facebook page.

Note: While we strive for factual accuracy in our posts, we readily acknowledge that we we sometimes make inadvertent mistakes. If you happen to catch one please don’t sit there and fume; let us know where we went wrong and we’ll do our best to correct things.

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Though it’s late on Halloween we figured a demonic Plymouth Road Runner finished in pumpkin orange and semi-gloss black was worth posting to celebrate the waning minutes of America’s greatest Celtic animist holiday.

The scary side of “Beep! Beep!”

Feral Cars Field Scout Bonnie “Point & Shoot” Ruttan sent in these of shots of a kind of psychotic looking ’69 Plymouth Road Runner she encountered on the scary streets of Palm Springs. We feel she really captured the spookiness of the moment.

Lovable “rake”

We find the photography truly compelling as befits the MoPar muscle subject matter. Dig those “dog dish” hubcaps! It’s a coupe, not a swanky ‘hardtop’ or convertible. This is automotive menace on par with Bob Mitchum’s turn as Max Cady in Cape Fear. This is as “bad-ass” as it gets. This aesthetic would call for a bench seat in the front, not sporty buckets that conjure up European pretense of which this car has absolutely none to speak of. When you hit the horn it makes a “beep! beep!” sound like the cartoon character. They would never have thought of that in Stuttgart, Coventry, Crewe, Munich or even Dearborn. This was built by the company that has a factory in a place called Poletown so some “out of the box” thinking is only to be expected.

Our hope is that it’s 4-speed manual but Chrysler’s three speed Torqueflite automatic is likely to shift quicker than you would yourself with a third pedal on the floorboard. What about this Plymouth pumpkin’s innards? More than likely a hot-rodded version of Chrysler’s 383 cubic inch (around 6.3 liters for you metric types) putting out 335hp and 425-lbs.ft. of torque. That’s a lot of pumpkin juice because this grinning ghoul weighs only about 3400 lbs. Contrast this level of Día De Los Muertos-style skeletal sveltness to the girth of a 2015 Dodge Charger RT, Chrysler’s current working class-affordable (but barely) muscle car. The latter day Dodge has ‘porked up’ to almost 4400 pounds.

Coyote p.o.v.

We love this candy corn-powered Plymouth and if you’d like to add one, in EXACTLY the same color scheme, to your fleet we suggest you part with a measly $38,900 and buy this oneoffered for sale in nearby Stratford, WI.

We’re on a high from all that candy and this commercial for the ’69 Road Runner featuring a lengthy passage of good ol’ Wyle E. Coyote vs. The Roadrunner animation, direct from the back lot in Burbank, only enhances the ongoing sugar rush.

If you’ve stalked a feral car and would like to submit a photo of it for posting consideration please send it to us: info (at) feralcars (dot)com OR through our Facebook page.

Note: While we strive for factual accuracy in our posts, we readily acknowledge that we we sometimes make inadvertent mistakes. If you happen to catch one please don’t sit there and fume; let us know where we went wrong and we’ll do our best to correct things.